I turn for a moment to the seeking that is not vain. 'Ye shall seek
Me' is not on Christ's lips to any heart that loves Him, however
imperfectly, a sentence of separation or an appointment of a sorrowful
lot, but it is a blessed law, the law of the Christian life.

That life is all one great seeking after Christ. Love seeks the absent
when removed from our sight. If we care anything about Him at all, our
hearts will turn to Him as naturally as, when the winter begins to
pinch, the migrating birds seek the sunny south, impelled by an
instinct that they do not themselves understand.

The same law which sends loving thoughts out across the globe to seek
for husband, child, or friend when absent, sets the really Christian
heart seeking for the Christ, whom, having not seen, it loves, as
surely as the ivy tendril feels out for a support. As surely as the
roots of a mountain-ash growing on the top of a boulder feel down the
side of the rock till they reach the soil; as surely as the stork
follows the warmth to the sunny Mediterranean, so surely, if your
heart loves Christ, will the very heart and motive of your action be
the search for Him.

And if you do _not_ seek Him, brother, as surely as He is parted from
our sense you will lose Him, and He will be parted from you wholly,
for there is no way by which a person who is not before our eyes may
be kept near us except only by diligent effort on our part to keep
thought and love and will all in contact with Him; thought meditating,
love going out towards Him, will submitting. Unless there be this
effort, you will lose your Master as surely as a little child in a
crowd will lose his nurse and his guide, if his hand slips from out
the protecting hand. The dark shadow of the earth on which you stand